Years ago, as an avid reader of the fantastic Weird NJ magazine, I read a story within its pages about the supposed ritualistic murder of Jeannette DePalma. A beautiful sixteen year old girl, DePalma left her house on August 7, 1972, to hitchhike to a friend’s house before heading to work. Unfortunately, she never made it.
Six weeks later, her body was found.
The story left me with an eerie vibe, and definitely weirded me out. Though the magazine usually had stories in it like this, for some reason, this one really stuck with me. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
Authors Jesse P. Pollack and Mark Moran were intrigued by the story. Moran is one of the two “Marks” who co-founded Weird NJ, so when they began receiving anonymous letters about the DePalma murder in 2002, his interest was piqued. He began collecting as much information about the forgotten, unsolved case as he could find. He gathered a lot about it, but kept hitting dead ends.
Pollack, who writes for the magazine, couldn’t shake the case from his thoughts after reading about it in Weird NJ #22. He took it upon himself to track down DePalma’s friends and family, to try to shed new light on it.
Both authors, armed with all this information, and the knowledge that DePalma’s killer was never caught, wanted to write the definitive account of the case, in hopes that perhaps DePalma might finally come to rest.
That definitive account has arrived, in the form of the book Death on the Devil’s Teeth
DePalma’s remains were found after a local dog brought home a decomposed arm. After the owner of said dog altered the police, a search party was formed to try to find where it came from. It wasn’t long before they found DePalma’s remains on top of a clip known as the Devil’s Teeth in an abandoned quarry.
Not wanting a massive panic on their hands, police tried to initially write it off as the girl had overdosed while partying with friends. However, there were many signs that pointed toward that being incorrect. Unfortunately, the body was so badly decomposed at that point that finding the cause of death was impossible.
Rumors of witchcraft and the occult surfaced, after some officials at the scene of the crime reported that occult-like objects were found surrounding the body. Was this seemingly religious girl the target of a group of Satanists? And if so, why did the church she was involved with distance themselves from her? What about the outwardly odd aspects of the case that officials seem to be covering up? And what about the connections to other local crimes, including the death of other young woman in surrounding towns?
Pollack and Moran do an expert job of crafting the narrative, piecing together the puzzle that many have all but forgotten (or wish to) over the years. In addition, not only do they try to get to the bottom of this grisly murder, but also find similarities in it to other cases, both before and after this one was committed.
It is clear that they both have a deep interest in the case, and that they went above and beyond normal research to try to tell the complete story. But that’s not to say they didn’t have their difficulties. They weren’t able to receive full cooperation from the police, and vital evidence they requested access to kept “disappearing,” due to misfiling, or “damaged by Hurricane Floyd.” On top of that, key witnesses and people involved in the case have died over the years, their memories lost to time. However, they still manage to shed light on even the darkest aspects of the case, presenting all sides to the story, but ultimately leaving it up to the reader to determine who to believe.
I’m a sucker for true crime, and a massive fan of Weird NJ, so there was no doubt that this book was going to reel me in. Prejudices aside, it is fantastically written, and tells the story of one of the strangest, almost forgotten cases in NJ history. If you enjoyed the podcast SERIAL, then this would be the literary equivalent of a different case. That said, with how deep the book goes, I would say it is far superior.
The grisly details of this case, and others, are not for the faint of heart, and will leave you with a chill. However, this book is so expertly researched and written that you cannot help but hope this will help close the case someday soon, and bring DePalma’s killer to justice.
NOTE: I received a copy of this book from Arcadia Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
